Japanese electric company Hokkaido Electric Power has indicated an interest in restarting one of its nuclear reactors to meet surging demand from local data centers.
Susumu Saito, CEO of Hokkaido, revealed that the company is finalizing compliance and regulation processes necessary to restart the Tomari Number Three reactor, which has a capacity of 912MW.
“We will make all-out efforts to restart operations as soon as possible, based on the premise of ensuring safety,” Saito said.
The rationale behind the move is a view that other energy sources within the Japanese market are “poor,” lacking stability in price and supply.
In turn, Saito advised that nuclear power, with its stability and low carbon footprint, is a much better option for data centers seeking to power their operations.
The Tomari three reactor was brought offline following the 2011 Fukushima disaster precipitated by the deadly Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, which resulted in electrical grid failure and damaged nearly all of the power plant's backup energy sources.
To alleviate concerns, Hokkaido Electric Power has proposed building a 19-meter seawall made of concrete and cement-improved soil to safeguard the reactor from future natural disasters. The project, estimated to cost $1.16 billion, would take around three years to complete.
The wall construction is seen as “the critical path for restarting operations,” according to Saito.
Japan’s turn toward nuclear follows a general trend in the market, driven primarily by data centers. In East Asia, Taiwan has indicated a willingness to support the deployment of nuclear energy to cope with the surging demand for power from chipmakers in the country precipitated by the growth of AI.
In addition, several US hyperscalers have signed high-profile nuclear power supply deals over 2024. These include AWS, which acquired Talen Energy’s data center campus at a nuclear power station in Pennsylvania in March, and Microsoft, which signed a power purchase agreement to take up 100 percent of power from the revived 837MW Three Mile Island nuclear power plant.
As a result, utilities within the US market have shown an increased willingness to restart their nuclear operations to meet the demand from data centers. Earlier this month, US utility Vistra indicated that it had entered into discussions with several high-profile data center operators to increase the output of its nuclear power projects.
The month before, NextEra Energy reported that it was considering restarting the Duane Arnold nuclear plant in Iowa due to strong interest from data centers.
